Doing good is the greatest art. They don’t look for good from good, so often you have to create from improvised materials. And what is the most in the world? That's right, evil. But it turns out that a miracle can be created from such matter, if there is a desire and an appropriate talent.
Robert Warren wrote the philosophical, political and social book "All the King's Men", where he paid attention to the confused political kitchen, where all the good and all the bad come from, which is laid down in the institution of the state, and at the same time devoted the text to people, their self-determination and self-affirmation in time .
Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic, and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He is the only person to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry. He won the Pulitzer in 1947 for his novel All the King's Men (1946) and won his subsequent Pulitzer Prizes for poetry in 1957 and then in 1979.
As for the first part, everything is complicated and ambiguous. On the one hand, each person acts only as an insignificant gear, an easily replaceable element in the mechanism of governing a city, state, country. On the other hand, according to Warren, even a pawn can crush the king and confuse the cards of stronger and older players. The Boss becomes such a pawn, in the past an absurd and as if crippled fat man, unable to present himself and convey his thoughts to voters, and now a powerful influential unit, whose speeches delight and awe the crowd, and the movement of a frowned eyebrow makes those close to rush to carry out orders.
The narrator is Jack Burden, a former historian and journalist, the right-hand man of Governor Willie Stark, whose subordinates simply call The Boss. Through the prism of an eyewitness of a bygone era, we can in all its glory enjoy the rise of the political career of a man who came from nowhere and removed from their homes corrupt officials and bureaucratic bosses that were warming themselves in their offices until those very elections.
Of course, none of this would have been possible had Stark remained the way Jack Burden first saw him. But as you know, behind the fate of a great man you can always find the shadow of a great woman. Here, too, there was one who saw Willie’s potential, was able to shake this rotten thing, kindled righteous anger in him and sent him to meet long and exhausting battles with a clumsy, but hardy system that parasitizes on the townsfolk.
Connections decide everything, and the Master has long been overgrown with a whole web of puppets, with the help of which he set about restoring order on a colossal scale. Just becoming a politician and not getting dirty is a very non-trivial task, besides, practice has shown that it is much more effective to use someone else's dirty laundry, or simply blackmail, threats and brute force, in order to achieve the desired results as soon as possible. So Stark went over to the side of evil in order to do good.
Throughout the book, Warren forces the reader to repeatedly reconsider their own views and attitude towards Governor Stark, notions of morality and the principle of the least evil. Each page examines our system of values to help us figure out how it is worth living, and where is the line that should not be crossed, what our vaunted self is worth.
It is from this that the philosophical and social component of the book begins. Here, the protagonist is not the fat Willie at all, but the observer Jack. He has been a member of the royal army for many years, but still does not know how he treats his patron. Yes, he respects, but at times he despises the boss for his actions, just as he despises himself for how and with what he lives, in what ways he solves the tasks set and what he pays for the price of external well-being.
Verdun has a difficult relationship with his parents, with close family friends who took part in the growing up of the boy Jack. And he understands with despair how far from those who love him, how difficult it is for him to find a common language with those who were nearby while he was growing up, becoming a man. Now it is too difficult to catch the lost time and correct the mistakes made. Although it is never too late to take the first step, while those who are dear to you are alive.
On the one hand, the service of the governor contributed to the rupture between Verdun and his mother, Verdun and the old judge, who replaced his father. But at the same time, it was thanks to those years that Jack contributed to the operation of the Stark campaign that he was finally able to understand himself, understand his past and see the future. And the rethinking of the past helped to come to terms with oneself and the older generation, which means gaining freedom from old complexes, fears and reflection.
Probably, journalistic experience allowed Warren to make the book fascinating and not boring, even despite all this political turmoil, which in other words would only irritate a not so sophisticated reader, but here it could interest and intrigue. I cannot say that the book opened my eyes to something hitherto unknown, and I remained of my opinion that politics is a dirty business. Although someone needs to deal with it and let it be people like Stark than his opponents. But from the point of view of psychology and philosophy, I got real aesthetic pleasure from the evolution of the image of Jack Verdun throughout this story. I think this is why the book can be classified as a must-read, because the most valuable thing in literature is people, and the best development is self-development through trying on someone else's skin, entering into a role. Thank you Robert Warren for a useful and enjoyable time!
This article was sponsored by Ray Odgers
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